In light of the recent suicide case in NTU, where an Indonesian undergraduate from EEE stabbed his FYP prof before jumping down, I am gonna give my 2 cent worth.
First of all, sad sad sad. I mean from the reports this undergraduate was an A grade caliber student. In addition, imagine how his parents would feel; watching a talented son grow up only to see him the last time at his funeral. I really feel for them, esp the mum. Like my mum used to always tell me, giving birth is like cutting a part of flesh from her body. After birth, any mum would do whatever they can to take care of this part. Oh well… as much as life goes on… wasted la…
Okay, just read on Channelnewsasia about counseling in University. My thoughts… u mean there is supposedly such services in the University Premises ? Why was there no publicity to make the awareness known to people ? But then again, back to the case of this incident, would the undergraduate really go for counseling if he knew about it ? The reason I question that is because normally people with chronic mental issues doesn’t think they need help. And especially in our Asian culture context, seeking help is like telling the world that you are “mad”, so I am truly skeptical about it.
Meanwhile, I don’t buy the talk about the curriculum being too stressful. Yes, the curriculum is stressful – NTU has one semester of work distributed in the other 5 semesters due to our industrial attachment; however, many of us had gone through it ourselves. Tough as it is, it doesn’t give you stress that makes a person berserk. At the end of the day, you want to be an engineer then you need to be up for it. I find that perhaps life is too good for many of these later generations people that they take things for granted, looking for accusations instead of looking within to find the problem. Most of the time, you reap what you sow, and you bear the consequences of what you did, period.
Another thing, you never know if the prof is an a$$hole you know. Believe me, after 4 years in NTU, I know how painful some of these so called professors can be. And this is totally the school’s fault. NTU, over the years, just is more interested in churning results from research than really teaching the undergraduate. Perhaps teaching wasn’t a priority, but we pay (however subsidized) for the teaching and tutoring you know…. We don’t need professors to write answers for tutorials for us to copy back and mimic the solutions; we need tutors who make us understand concepts more than spoon feeding. Good lecturers have their contracts not renewed probably due to them spending longer times with undergraduates… I mean I am not going to list names… but yeah we know some…
As much as the media wants to talk about it, I personally think this incident was a one off lah. More likely than not, a bad combination of events just spiral into this tragedy. How to prevent it ? Very hard arh… one kind of rice feed thousand kinds of people. We just got to learn to be responsible for our actions sometimes.
In conclusion, the Indonesian undergraduate made a decision to take up EEE. He lost his scholarship someway, and the mental stress (with FYP added) was too much for him to bear probably. Who is to be blamed ? Personally, I blame the undergraduate for not loving himself and his family enough to know that suicide is not the end, but a beginning of more pain and sorrow.
=(
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